Digital Foxfire

From OpenContent Curriculum

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING AND HELPING DEVELOP THIS PROJECT PLEASE LOGIN TO THE WIKI AND CLICK THE "WATCH" TAP ABOVE. YOU WILL ALSO WANT TO "WATCH" THE "DISCUSSION" PAGE, WHICH ALSO HAS A TAB ABOVE.

Current Projects

Cultural Units

Artifact Research

The Artifact Research project involves research to discover whatever we can about some of the common artifacts we find on the beaches around St. Michael: turquoise glass.

Birds of Shishmaref

This is an extension of Ken Stenek's succesful and popular science classroom blog from the 2007-08 school year. This a great way to leverage the worldwide audience interested in birding that can literally only be done in our region. Other villages have experienced an upsurge in birding tourism in recent year, and could also do similar projects. MP3s? Movies? Sure! No problem using our wiki here, or the WordPress installations that Damon can set up for any teacher.

Native Languages

SHH Social Studies is starting an Inupiaq dictionary language project which helps meet standard SS.A.15 Elements of Culture among others. The project involved students taking pictures, and a bilingual staff member coming into the classroom to teach the Inupiaq words for all of the pictures.

The next phase will be students recording the pronunciation of the Inupiaq words and posting them under the picture and the Inupiaq text.

This could easily turn into a collaboration across the district. We could have students from all sites post their village's word for the pictures.

We are still unsure of the medium we will be using for this project (Voicethreads, a blog, WikiSpaces, etc.), but we will finalize that over the next few days.

We have been in touch with a cultural ethnologist who would like to add the ability to include Siberian Yup'ik, and translate from Russian for us. He has alread starting some editing.

The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush was a major influence on the history, culture and economics of our region. Some students and teachers at sites are looking at this in Social Studies this year, and can add resources about how their own villages or ancestors were influenced, or are adding pictures of gold dredges, road houses, and other artifacts of the Gold Rush period that still exist. The BSSD Gold Rush page is the best starting place for your students or visitors to contribute. Teller has offered
pictures of the abandoned mining dredges in their area, for example.

International Polar Year Speaker Series

Building a Sled

The How to Build a Sled section started as a St. Michael student project, and shows the illustrated steps to constructing a hickory sled with runners. Sleds are not only used for dogs in our area, but also for hauling freight around the villages, and when hunting or travelling in the region. This project shows the steps, and provides instructions for anyone wishing to build a workable sled from scratch. Although it is a work in progress, what has been done is quite detailed and provides very specific examples!